In A Difficult Situation or A Crisis
by veronikat
Summary: You could always look at the sky, and look at the Universe, and look at the ground through gaps in your stretched out fingers, and you know these are all the same things. One-shot in Kaidan's POV


_A small one-shit from Kaidan's POV, in Shep's cabin, having a bit of an emotional crisis? A kind of casual one? Just regretting circumstances for being what they are, you know, with the impending end of much of the known Galaxy. _

_Thank you very much for reading, and enjoy !_

* * *

You could always look at the sky, and look at the Universe, and look through gaps in your stretched out fingers at the ground; and you know these are all the same things.

If it was blue and variegated and went on in a way you couldn't measure, full of beautiful light and beautiful clouds, or of it was the Normandy - grey and cool, solid, dimensions and a depth you could see, recognize by just your eyes - these are all made of the same things.

A vaccum that blasted a white noise, that was poked full of a million holes of compressed energy and heat, or just an alarm clock. An orange, holographic face and audio that he could customize, sits beside you on the beside table and keeps time in a strict arrangment of seconds to minutes, and in the shock of early mornings where each breath is still dared you see it as some kind of epiphany.

Molecules and atoms, frenetic motion, the _glue_ - everything the same.

Like -

_oh my god, _

_i finally see what's going on - _

Your heartbeat punches loud before you swallow, and you reach out and touch the clock, let your finger sink through the holograph. Is this all there is, is this where it ends, are the two of you just victims of circumstance - friends and then lovers, finally aware of what's been going on, just before the Universe calculates out it's final days and goes dark.

Burning so quickly through it's own adolescence. Looking at the Universe now - _at a quarter to twelve_ - you could see what you had been watching everyday of your life, only now you could describe it as a sight you couldn't want to live without.

His weight on the mattress, his breath whistling out through his slightly open mouth, his alarm clock.

_turn it into a prayer, a litany, that you say every minute, everywhere that you go_

And you've gotten so close, and it's gotten so close to all going dark, inch by inch. Closer to erupting in a sound that is like nerve endings being torn from ganglion's; your scream so brilliant and so loud you can't hear it at all.

_look at how this is - _

You want to tell it all to slow down and to take it's time. Don't rush to anything, expansion and growth happen whether you are eager for it or not, and death happens in much the same way.

At a certain point, you had started to see that in a way that was inescapable, your own death. Enveloped in a strong sense of inevitiability that for some years prior had still felt avoidable, but insipid, like taking to the stairs in the dark, your hands out in front of yourself - you thought you could avoid real damage if you tried, probably, maybe - _not at all_. You knew this, you knew this very well. And now you sometimes stop in mid-step, and you stop to count your fingers, and to flex your palms and feel the stretch of muscle; think about the life you're given, and think - _oh my god._

When you're nearly breaking thirty-five, and the headaches hang on tight, they cause losses of your vision.

When the uniforms all fit the same but your muscles can't carry them with the same stature that they always did. They are tired and sore, stretched to breaking, and you looked back at the Universe and what you used to say -

_i've been here before, okay. go ahead. it'll be fine. _

Then you found someone who would help you glue together miniature ship models. Someone whose happy doing just that.

So, you let that resonate. Someplace you _haven't_ been before, and allowing this means that at the same time you're slowly losing something that you love - you'll lose this, day by day - but maybe it also means that you haven't squandered all the time that you ever had. Just think about that.

_me and you, yeah, it makes sense_

The Normandy, and little Harbinger, and puddlejumpers like Mako; you've built them all. He keeps them in the same room as his fancy alarm clock. You can see them from where you are on the mattress, your legs over the edge and abuzz with pins and needles sensations - _a restlessness, been waiting too long, can't waste anymore_ - and they are the same as the flat bedded, square fingers that pieced them together.

It is your upmost trust in little things like this that always gets you.

Thinking, _this is all there is._

The sawdust of words that you keep in your memory, where they repeat hollow and long, and loud.

You look at the face of the clock, and out the window, and at his hand on the pillow, and you look at yourself, too, and you think - not one will take nay longer than the other to die. Just slow it all down.


End file.
